State media continues to endorse hate speech
Written by Administrator Wednesday, 04 July 2012 15:01
Hate speech is defined as prejudiced language that attacks or vilifies a social group or member of such a group with the intention of systematically undermining and subjugating the identified victim using insulting and offensive language in order to destroy their public reputation. By its very nature hate language is specifically intended to excite hostility and public contempt for those individuals or groups who are its targets to an extent that they no longer deserve to have their basic human rights protected. In Zimbabwe hate speech has become an endemic and poisonous epidemic that has fractured and polarized society by promoting extreme levels of political and social intolerance and hostility towards any group or individual that disagrees with the ZANU-PF’s perspective of reality.
According to the Global Political Agreement (GPA), no journalist or media organisation should make a media blitz against any political party or any person. No Journalist or media organisation must promote hatred, whether the public media or Private media. In May 2012 Information and Publicity Minister Webster Shamu in May 2012 announced that the government will soon propose a law barring hate speech in the media appearing before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Media, Information and Communication Technology. Up to now no media reforms have taken place as yet and Zimbabwe continues to be subjected to hate language from the state media. ZBC has been converted into a Zanu PF mouthpiece when in fact it is a national broadcaster. The use of hate speech by several Zanu (PF) politicians is the cause of increasing cases of politically motivated violence.
According to a report conducted by the Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe, ZBC continues to flout Article 19.1(d) of the GPA, which recognizes all three parties to the inclusive government to be equal partners that deserve “balanced and fair coverage for their legitimate political activities. Beginning of the year 2012 witnessed a resurgence in the use of hate speech in the government controlled media aimed at publicly discrediting Zanu PF’s legitimate political opposition. Excessive airtime is being allocated to Zanu-PF, while opposition parties are denied access. In February 2012, ZBC broadcasted live on television, a poem recited by a grade one pupil in Chipinge at a musical gala held in Chipinge to celebrate President Mugabe’s 88th birthday.
“Tsvangirai, ndaiona musoro kukura ndikati injere, ndange ndisingazivi kuti kurwara (Tsvangirai, I used to think that your big head is a reflection of intelligence, little did I know that it is a sign of sickness),” she said to roars of approval from a largely pro-Mugabe crowd.
She described Mugabe as a demi-god whose leadership capabilities were being chocked by Tsvangirai “the weed and coward that fled the liberation war while Mugabe fought white colonialists”.
ZBC chief executive officer Mr Happison Muchechetere has refuted allegations that the broadcaster is partisan by arguing that the ZBC does not play songs with hate language.
“We don’t play jingles, but songs that talk about Zimbabwe, songs that exalt the leader of Zimbabwe just like they do in other countries like America: they don’t play songs that exalt the Prime Minister. Jingles are 30 seconds to about a minute and they are done during elections. So, we don’t play jingles. The airplay of songs dedicated to the Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, President Robert Mugabe, ZBC is open to every political party, and is not a Zanu PF tool.”
The perpetrators of hate speech also include politicians, candidates, and senior government officials or groups associated with a political party whose statements were reported in the media as news. Almost invariably the main perpetrators were senior government officials from the Presidium, especially President Mugabe himself downwards to government ministers, such as Minister of Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Patrick Chinamasa and the Minister of Information Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, service chiefs who include Police Commissioner-General Augustine Chihuri; Commander of the Defence Forces, Constantine Chiwenga; Brigadier Douglas Nyikayaramba, Prisons Chief Paradzai Zimondi, party officials, party functionaries and other party affiliates such as war veterans.
While inflammatory public insults have been going down of late, President Robert Mugabe is on record saluting attacks on leaders of opposition parties, while his lieutenants are also guilty of hate language.
Most significantly, the government-controlled media continues to endorse and amplify hate speech in the news and current affairs programmes of the state broadcaster and in the news and opinion columns of the newspapers under government control.